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Ruby Redfort, Look Into My Eyes
Ruby Redfort, Look Into My Eyes is the first book in the Ruby Redfort series. It was first published in hardback and eBook format on 29th September 2011. A new edition in softback was published on 7th May 2015. Brief Summary "Meet thirteen year old American girl Ruby Redfort. She may seem like any other all-American girl, but she is a genius. At the age of eight, she made up a code that even Harvard professors struggled to crack. That's why when mysterious voices leave messages on her phone, and a fly symbol keeps popping up, it doesn't take Ruby too long to discover Spectrum." -Extract from theguardian.com. Plot Prologue A two year old girl is standing by a window in autumn, watching the leaves fall. She watches one leaf as it hits a truck window, then observes as the driver of the truck starts to talk to her neighbour Mr Pinkerton. She then sees a woman come round the corner and climb over Mr Pinkerton's fence, following a subtle signal from the truck driver. The woman returns but her basket she is holding looks like it is moving. The girl senses something is wrong but her parents do not understand so they take her out for a walk. As the family walk past the house, the girl sees a white badge on the floor and picks it up. It is then discovered that Mr Pinkerton's dog has been stolen, and although the police investigate the crime, they do not find the dog. On that day the girl decides to aim to become a detective. She is called Ruby Redfort. Five years later, Ruby wins the Junior Code-Cracking Championships by solving the Eisenhauser Conundrum. She then goes on to win the Junior Code-Creator Contest. Ruby is offered a place at Harvard University (aged seven) but declines it. Main Story Ruby Redfort is enjoying a normal life on an ordinary day in Twinford. Ruby's parents, Brant and Sabina Redfort, arrive back from Switzerland, but over dinner their housekeeper Mrs Digby gets into a food fight with Consuela Cruz, the Redfort chef. Mrs Digby leaves the house in a huff when she thinks that Sabina is taking Consuela's side. The next day three very strange things happen. Ruby's house is burgled and everything is taken except the phones. She also gets a coded telephone call from a gravelly-voiced woman. Additionally, a man called Hitch arrives in the house claiming to be from the house-management agency that Sabina phoned to find a temporary replacement for Mrs Digby. However, Ruby thinks he is suspicious. She goes to school the next day and discusses the events with her friend Clancy Crew. Having worked out the clues, she follows them to the Lucky Eight Gas station, where she finds a manhole cover. She climbs down the manhole cover and eventually ends up in a white room, where the same gravelly voiced woman is there to meet her. The woman (LB) tells her that she is the head of a very secret ageny called Spectrum. She offers Ruby a job as a codebreaker as they recently lost their codebreaker Lopez. Ruby accepts after a while and goes home. As she climbs out of the manhole cover, she sees Hitch, who is actually a secret agent, assigned to look after Ruby while his injury heals. Ruby returns to HQ to take the 99 Second Test. She is taken on a tour of the gadget room by Buzz, where she accidentally steals the Bradley Baker Rescue Watch. She meets Miles Froghorn, who takes her to the test room. She takes the test and answers all the questions correctly, thus becoming a member of Spectrum. LB fills her in on the details of her assignment; the previous codebreaker died in an avalanche, while working on a case called Fools' Gold. Before she died, she phoned Spectrum to say that she had figured the case out, but died before she could return to HQ. Ruby's job is to reread the files and find what Lopez discovered but couldn't tell them. Meanwhile, Mrs Digby is trapped in a large aircraft hangar with all of the Redforts' personal belongings. She hears men going through all the items, but they do not find what they are looking for. Ruby is taken to the Maverick Street Office by Agent Blacker, to start working on the Fools' Gold files. She works on the files during school hours, as Hitch excuses her from lessons. However, Clancy is confused and upset because she has suddenly started ignoring him. She tries to lie to him but can't and ends up telling him the truth about Spectrum. Ruby finds out information about where Lopez went and takes Clancy with her to the Fountain Hotel, where she finds out that Lopez spied on a woman in a veiled hat before she went on vacation. Ruby sneaks into a breifing about suspects for the City Bank heist and finds out about the Count von Viscount, Nine Lives and Baby Face Marshall. She is then summoned to LB's office, where she asks if she can see Lopez's stuff, as she thinks there may be a clue there. LB fires her. Ruby and Clancy break in to the Maverick Street office and find Lopez's belongings. Among them is a powder compact which has a rubbing of a map inside, that Lopez took at the Fountain Hotel. Ruby tells Hitch about her findings and he reports them to LB. However, Ruby is not reinstated as a codebreaker. Ruby and Clancy are eating pizza in a square when they see a red-haired woman who Clancy has a hunch about. They follow her and sneak into her hotel room, where they find a diamond revolver and some photos, taken at Geneva Airport. The photos include a moustached man looking terrified, turning round and running away, bumping into Ruby's mother in the process. She tells Hitch, who contacts LB to ask for someone to look after Ruby, as he is worried she will get herself into trouble. LB provides Froghorn. Hitch then leaves the Redforts, going to his next assignment. Ruby comes up with a theory: the man from Geneva slipped something into her mother's jacket pocket, like in her favourite TV show Crazy Cops. Ruby slips past Froghorn, who is supposed to be making sure she doesn't get into trouble, and goes to the dry-cleaners. She finds a glass key in the pocket of her mother's suit, which she hides in her hair. She then goes to Clancy's house, but before she gets there, a man in a silver convertable turns up. Ruby assumes it is Hitch, but it is actually Baby Face Marshall. Ruby gets in the car and is taken away. Hitch tries to find out what Clancy knows about Spectrum, but Clancy will not reveal anything. However, upon finding a coded note from Ruby telling him to "blab to the butler", he tells Hitch everything. Ruby is kept hostage by Baby Face Marshall in a tower room, while the Jade Buddha launch party is going on. The Count von Viscount then comes and talks to her about Spectrum and his plan to steal the Jade Buddha. He gets the glass key off her, which is the key to the Jade Buddha's glass case. The Count tells her that the tower room will turn into a giant hourglass and bury her in emerald-green sand, and leaves. Ruby escapes out of the window just as there is an explosion at the Twinford City Bank. Meanwhile, Mrs Digby is still trapped with all the Redforts' furniture. She hears a scrabbling noise, which she thinks is rats, and goes to investigate, but finds it is a short Swiss man with a large moustache: Klaus Gustav. At the launch party, Clancy tries to find Hitch, as he believes the man who claims to be Klaus Gustav at the party is not (he is correct, it is the Count in disguise). Clancy and Hitch run to the tower room, but it is full of sand and Ruby is not there. Hitch sends Clancy to find her in the City Museum basement, where he is caught by Nine Lives. Ruby makes her way to the museum basement and steals the key from the Count. She tries to break it, but it doesn't break and the Count tells Baby Face Marshall to kill her. Hitch enters the basement and karate chops Baby Face. Then Nine Lives arrives, having caught Clancy. There is a big fight, which results in Nine Lives being shot by Hitch. Ruby goes off to find the Count and distracts him just as the Jade Buddha goes up through the floor at midnight. Baby Face is arrested when Spectrum agents and security guards arrive but the Count disappears into thin air. Mrs Digby returns and joins Ruby, Brant and Sabina in the great hall of the museum as they look at the Buddha at midnight. Epilogue Ruby and Clancy go to Mrs Beesman's yard to clean it up, because Clancy told Sabina that Ruby cleaned it, when he was covering for her Spectrum activity. LB contacts Ruby on the watch transmitter and tells her that she can be a proper Spectrum agent. What I Know and What I Don't Know Ruby writes that Froghorn is on stakeout duty for letting her get away. She wrties why Buzz is called Buzz, but that part is blanked out. Finally, she writes that she doesn't know what the Count was looking at on the Jade Buddha with a laser tool, but Clancy has a hunch that they haven't seen the last of him. Characters Main Characters *Ruby Redfort *Clancy Crew *Hitch *LB *Agent Blacker *Miles Froghorn *Mrs Digby Supporting Characters *Brant Redfort *Sabina Redfort *Consuela Cruz *Buzz *Count von Viscount *Baby Face Marshall *Valerie "Nine Lives" Capaldi *Carla Lopez Minor Characters *Mrs Drisco *Klaus Gustav *Madame Erhling *Felix *Sandy *Vapona Begwell *Mrs Schneiderman *Bill (chauffeur) *Freddie, Marjorie and Quent Humbert Ra